The transition from CFO to CIO

Time and again, we have seen CFOs make the leap to become CEOs. It’s a common trend, with 33% of S&P 500 CFOs who changed jobs heading for the chief executive role. But what about other C-suite roles? Could we, for instance, see more CFOs become CIOs? This isn’t nearly as common, but it’s not unheard of. With organisations pushing to see more and more effective use of tech, people and processes, could this be a trend we’re set to see more of?

The CIO role is changing. It used to be squarely focused on IT and tech, solely the domain of the thoroughly computer literate, with a sole focus on technical aspects of the business. The main goal? To get an advantage over competitors based on tech use.

However, over recent years, it’s expanded to be more than that. Yes, it’s still about IT and tech, but the definition of the role has broadened to include cyber, digital services, processes and general business transformation. CIO’s take ownership of a company’s entire data and process estates, with a view to creating a great employee and customer experience wherever possible. Digital transformation is one of the best ways to ensure this happens.

Keeping the flow of data clear

The flow of information around the business is a process issue and tech issue. The CIO role now involves looking at work in one area of a business and how that impacts others across the rest of it.
That means they need to get a grasp on data. This means asking questions like:

1.  Is it complete?
2. Is it accurate and valid?
3. Is it contaminated?
4.  Are we using it properly?
5.  Can we make informed decisions?

Data travels around a business, but there could be issues with it, it could have no real value, or you might not be able to do anything with it. That’s where a CIO can have a real impact and put an information strategy in place.
Data is not a synonym for information. Data is raw and unprocessed. It doesn’t have context and without processing, it won’t be of much use. Information is what you get when you process that data and turn it into something that most human beings can interpret and understand. This is what you’ll use to drive real strategy in a business. Data without an information strategy is just floating numbers.

Creating an information strategy requires looking at the company’s data and turning it into information. It’s then using that information to communicate and educate the business; and overseeing the information share holistically. It’s the whole end-to-end journey of data and information flow throughout the business. This is how CIOs can ensure that the business moves in the right direction and remains competitive.

Transferable skills

C-suite skill sets are highly transferable between roles, with each member needing to be able to look at how their decisions will impact the wider business. However, CFOs in particular need to have a strong cost-benefit mindset, so that works well in the CIO function. It’s especially helpful when it comes to digital transformation, a CFO is often able to look at optimisation, often adding automation rather than piling more tech on top of additional tech.

To achieve the best results, CFOs and CIOs rely heavily on the work the other does, and ultimately have to work very closely with one another. That means there’s a remarkable amount of crossover when it comes to skillsets. The transferable skills lie in understanding the value of information.

All the skills a CFO has around managing financial data and information, as well as analysing trends of information throughout the business, are transferable into a CIO role. Any finance professional with XP&A skills such as bringing disparate systems together or collating all data will know how to create meaningful reports and a bigger picture with more context. These finance leaders present the information in such an accessible format that non-financial people can easily consume it. It is well understood that finance professionals need to be able to convey their findings to a layperson.

In much the same way, there are benefits of a non-technical person being a CIO. For instance, their direct reports (who are technical) need to communicate their technical information in a non-technical way. This means teams can’t hide behind jargon. By making the technical understood by the non-technical, there is more information shared, and more success. By having a CFO move into this role, the entire team needs to consider non-technical people in everything they do. The former CFO still needs to listen closely to their reports and do what they can to build up their technical knowledge, but a lack of it shouldn’t hold them back.

Having a strong relationship between the CFO and CIO is vital. If you’ve made that transition in either direction, then you create pre-existing positive relationships that set you up for success.

Final thoughts

The CFO to CIO trajectory isn’t always expected, but there are a lot of benefits that can result from it . Through their great understanding of the flow of information, CFOs can bring a unique perspective to the CIO role. There is a great deal of crossover skills, and we should never get caught up on specific technical know-how for roles that are more about management and communication.
Could the transition from CFO to CIO be a growing trend we can expect to see more of?

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